OBJET

"This issue intends to critically investigate and question processes of urban change and transformation from a wide range of (trans-)disciplinary, conceptual and theoretical, as well as methodological, approaches."

"[T]he proposed themed issue intends to bring together various papers that critically tackle the complex current urban re-configurations and disparate development paths of contemporary urban dynamics in the Middle East and North Africa from cross-fertilising multidisciplinary perspectives. Besides widely present “global cities”, this also includes less-investigated “secondary cities” that nevertheless undergo much the same experiences. As it is done in most social and cultural disciplines today, we understand “urban development” as an open, non-linear and non-teleological process of recurrent transformation and change covering a broad range of aspects, and going far beyond urban planning and architecture alone. However, the term “development” is not neutral and should be attentively scrutinized in itself. In connection with the general tendencies outlined above, urban development also includes issues such as :

urban governance

place branding

migrating urban models

the integration of cities into global and regional networks

esthetical challenges

heritage politics with respect to colonial architecture and former cosmopolitanism

and the question of how individuals and groups enact, contribute to and deal with current urban transformations"